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I thought those were the patents that Apple held. So these are the ones Apple is claiming Nokia infrienged. Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/12/11/apple_files_countersuit_against_nokia.html

It's true, see here.

Consumer Reports supplied the research, Google is your friend: Apple Insider

Global market share of Mac is just over 4%: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/12/01/apples_iphone_halo_effect_again_carries_mac_sales_to_new_heights.html

I think the 9% figure you quote is for the US, you jingoistic, narrow-minded American swine.

---linuxrocks123

With Android-based phones cranking up, how long will it be before Apple loses their market share due to these shenanigans?

Android was first released in October 2008, with the first device being available the same month - thats over a year ago. According to Apple, the iPhone sold more than 4 million units in the first 200 days, so wheres the equivalent Android sales explosion? Analysts are expecting Android sales to outstrip iPhone sales by 2012, but why is it going to take that long if Android is such a good competitor? It didn't take the iPhone anywhere near two and a half years to take a significant chunk of the market from competitors.

I'm not an Android hater, I haven't used it so I don't hold an opinion on it, but it seems to be held as the ultimate saviour on /., and I'm struggling to see why. Its not the iPhone I am worried about, its the Android series of phones...

There is an analysis here, not entirely without flaws, that explains some of the problems Android is facing.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/21/inside_googles_android_and_apples_iphone_os_as_software_markets.html
One of the biggest ones is hardware: limited flash on board castrates applications.

And leaving some of control of the firmware to the handset makers is the single, biggest mistake you can do. One of the main reasons the software scene on Symbian is lo lousy. You end up with too many different versions of the OS in use at the same time, and in some cases updating will be very, very difficult (did it never happen that a give FW update was NOT available for your specific Nokia handset - and thus you were unable to use some applications? IN Europe this is very common).

And TOO different HW characteristics. Some people complain that Apple's 480x320 screen is no longer the coolest around.

Of course Apple is already working on updates to the display - but in such a way that applications and icons won't look like rubbish (like scaling on the Motorola Droid). I need non insider info to know they are: they would be dumb if they didn't - and they may be evil, but not stupid.

I expect an exact doubling of resolution in both axes, and this will of course happen a bit later than on the Android platform (854x480 current on Droid), and with some _very_ simple software support (developers will have to check if such a screen is available, otherwise apps will be scaled, I guess).

Roberto

Perhaps Android apps don't sell as well as iPhone apps is because there are a LOT less Android phones than iPhones?

First I read some article about Gates praising Jobs, and now this?

I think the Mayans might be on to something.

A better link:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/24/informed_players_say_apples_mac_mini_still_kickin.html

NASA Press Release: 'Making NASA more accessible to the public is a high priority for the agency,' said Gale Allen, director of Strategic Integration and Management for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington. 'Tools like this allow us to provide users easy access to NASA information and progress at a fast pace.' Apple Insider: 'New study shows iPhone users to be in a class by themselves'.

Interesingly, rumors have it that it may be caused by dogfooding or sabotage.

Dogfooding because Microsoft loves to replace infrastructure with Windows equivalents, and maybe it failed (E.g., Hotmail).

Sabotage because apparently the old Danger team is somewhat disgruntled, which may explain why it's so difficult to recover the data because the backups were destroyed as well...

Oh, sure, they've got a history of horrible transitions. HotMail comes to mind immediately.

See "dogfooding" within the following:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/12/microsofts_sidekick_pink_problems_blamed_on_dogfooding_and_sabotage.html

Danger wrote and created the solution. Unfortunately for Microsoft, they walked into a terribly run company though.

Not only did they screw this up, but they also screwed up the reason that Microsoft bought them--their "Pink" project. It's probably about time to cut that entire company loose. Even AppleInsider claims it may be sabotage, and AppleInsider takes every chance to knock Microsoft down a few pegs (and does in the paragraphs leading up to it).

I don't know what went wrong, but something tells me that a poor implementation was at the root of it and the "Danger" division was to blame. I imagine they are run like a separate division, rather than one big happy family.

Hackers sued for tinkering with Xbox games - Sued by a video game maker

Hacking the Xbox - Excerpt: "Last year, a Microsoft lawsuit temporarily shut down the Hong Kong-based company Lik Sang, which sold mod chips over the Internet."

Apple serves DMCA notice to OSx86 Project

When I saw this video, I immediately thought of this article: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/01/evidence_of_apples_tablet_like_input_interface_reappears.html

The idea is that "iTunes LP" would serve as the non-song content you used to get when you bought an album: the beautiful LP cover, lyrics, and other stuff. But upgraded to the digital era.

The problem with this non-story is that Apple isn't selling iTunes LP extras, it's giving it away when you buy the regular album associated with it.

It was a defensive move to prevent the labels from inventing their own proprietary format instead. iTunes LPs are just self-contained websites built using web standards: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Apple created a JavaScript framework called TuneKit to allow these "self contained websites" to interact with iTunes, playing content etc.

The same format is used to deliver iTunes Extras, the same bonus format for movies. Essentially, both are designed to make extremely easy to author bonus content that labels and studios (including indies) can use to add value to their existing work.

Obviously, Apple doesn't want to launch the new format with a bunch of crap, and taint it with mocking commentary that equates garbage or wierdo music with the format. So it launched the new format with iTunes 9 using a dozen big music acts and a similar number of recent movies. There has been the typical hysterical fit from poorly sourced, half-right "tech news" pieces that claimed Apple hates indies and will charge $10,000 (!) to develop the titles.

This is clearly all uninformed bullshit because there's no way Apple would develop content for third parties for just $10,000 a pop. Not even a professional authoring artist would do these for that kind of budget. Compare the free involved with authoring a DVD or BluRay disc, or creating all the artwork for a band's website or a multimedia CD-ROM.

Slashdot picked up the story and keeps trying to bump it up into the air because it sounds bad for Apple. The reality is that this is the best possible album format design anyone in the FOSS community could have hoped for. It's open, you can built it yourself, and kids can even apply some remedial HTML skills to remix their own content downloads. It's the web with a minimal business model.

New iTunes LP and Extras built using TuneKit Framework, aimed at Apple TV
Why Apple is betting on HTML 5: a web history
Apple plans to open iTunes LP for independent labels

Apple isn't charging $10k: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/13/apple_plans_to_open_itunes_lp_for_independent_labels.html

Here's a link to the outside world: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/13/apple_plans_to_open_itunes_lp_for_independent_labels.html

Responding to criticism that the iTunes LP format has been priced out of reach for independent musicians and labels, Apple has said it plans to open the format in the near future.

Essentially they will allow anyone to design their own LP and bypass the $10,000 production fee.

Somebody's about to get a really awkward performance review.

Apparently the reviewee's name is Roz Ho. We should all send her flowers. Thanks, Roz. Write if you find work.

Sendo did take them to court. The suit was settled in 2004 for money and Microsoft giving up their ownership stake. In 2005 Sendo finally went under and what's left was bought by Motorola.

This is in no way related to Microsoft's outright buyout of SideKick and Danger, which at last report was a square deal for cash and going swimmingly except for the minor data loss issue, the defections and the total absence of morale since the Pink Slips incident.

So apparently this whole SideKick/Danger thing had gotten completely out of hand even before they lost everyone's data, and people aren't being shy about calling the whole thing dead. The first link even calls doom on Windows Mobile according to Gartner. That's a shame. I really liked WiMo except for the performance, the interface, the reliability, the paucity of third party apps, the retro hardware compatibility, the need for a stylus and the utter lack of any compelling features.

Microsoft really needs to bust into the phone market and now it ain't gonna happen. They're not gaining share anywhere else and their stock is tracking the S&P for the last decade while Apple has grown from nobody to a $170B company. And now they've demonstrated their fickle partnership loyalties to every single player in the phone market and brilliantly demonstrated their inability to execute as their attempts at an own-brand phone erupt into flames. The complete loss of opportunity in the massive growth smartphone market really has to sting. Between this and the field of dreams that is Zune they're completely discredited in the CE space. I really wish I was a furniture salesman in Redmond today.

I had never heard of Roz Ho before today. I think I'll send her flowers.

According to a very long article on AppleInsider:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/09/exclusive_pink_danger_leaks_from_microsofts_windows_phone.html&page=3

MS was misleading T-Mobile about the state of Sidekick support, and apparently charging hundreds of millions every year for, and I quote "a handful of people in Palo Alto managing some contractors in Romania, Ukraine, etc". This is apparently because most of the Sidekick devs had either moved to Pink or quit out of disgust.

There's some interesting background leaks on the takeover of Danger in this article which seem to imply they cut a lot of staff, and gutted the company, which is now running on a skeleton staff. So I guess it's not too surprising when this sort of mistake is made. Not the most reliable source, but they did definitely cut a lot of danger staff after the acquisition.

No worries, this is not about putting any sort of Flash-anything on the iPhone.

It's only about using the next Flash developer tool release to convert Flash apps into iPhone apps. They're using LLVM to compile ActionScript (Adobe's proprietary version of JavaScript) into ARM code, resulting in a standard iPhone app. There's no Flash runtime involved (nor could there be). So there's no problem with shoveling this into the App Store, apart from meeting basic quality requirements.

So this will turn shitty Flash game-lets into shitty iPhone apps. Not really news, apart from the fact that Adobe is scrambling to line up every phone vendor but can't get its Flash runtime on the phone that's soaking up half of the world's mobile Internet traffic.

HTML5 assault on Adobe Flash heats up with ClickToFlash

Beats parking an "I'm a PC" booth outside Apple Store

Apple keeps 29 cents per song, which may be why they're a bit miffed.

Even at that, they shouldn't be. After subtracting out costs, Apple's estimated profit per song is more like 10 cents.

The 14% is worldwide growth in the home market, I have not been able to find where I saw those figures, much to my chagrin.

However, here are some similar figures, though not the study I was quoting, and they aren't looking at the exact same segments either. I may have mis-quoted the article I came accross as well, I can't tell, since I can't find it again.

You are certainly right to question.

Here's an interesting article regarding the hype surrounding Zune HD (which isn't actually HD to begin with).

In Microsoft's world, HD means 480x272. HD Radio? It stands for Hybrid Digital, not High Definition and works only in US.

Because they are apparently having manufacturing problems with it.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/07/technical_issues_could_delay_ipod_camera_upgrade.html

If they did not have a hard ship date for that product, I think they would pull it from the presentation rather than announce it was coming "sometime." I would look for an iTouch with camera and faster internals to be announced for the holidays.

Supposedly, the new touch should have had a camera in, but it was delayed because of technical issues with the camera module.

Most people who buy laptops aren't going to be tethered to a desk. A big honking security cage or even a simple security cable prevents a prospective buyer from getting a feel for how portable the laptop is. Perhaps Apple should follow the lead of jewelry stores, and lock up its merchandise after hours. To be fair, most jewelry stores are designed with this closing procedure in mind, whereas most at most Apple stores, the laptops would have to be stored in back room-- which may not be more secure in any meaningful way

Its only 30 if you forked out 130 for the last one, so you could really call it 160.

Apple has confirmed that you can install the $30 upgrade version on top of Tiger.

That goes totally against common sense.

How? A mobile phone is an electronic device. If the mechanical part (slide mechanism) on my HTC Dream fails but the electronic mechanism does not the phone still works as a phone. If the electronic components fails but the mechanical components.

Basic engineering, the more complex something is the more likely it is to fail. Electronic components are orders of magnitude more complex then mechanical components.

Were it true, why is the iPhone approval rating so high with users?

Marketing trumps engineering. An approval rate is no indication of good engineering when marketing takes over. The accepted failure of the iphone rate is 10%, some sources quote up to 15-20% but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. There isn't much info on the failure rate of the HTC Dream, given the fact that there is so little press and the Apple fanboys seem to have a special grudge against Google a high rate of failure would be publicised (lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, but apply Occams Razor here).

In either case, 10% failure is far too high for consumer electronics and the satisfaction rate for HTC owners is about the same.

It can be as simple and amazing as you like, mechanical systems will eventually fail and are more prone to forces that make them fail (like angry users or simple sand)

This is where you need to take into account how vital that system is to the operation of the device. The mechanical system does not need to last forever, it just needs to last the lifetime of the device. Besides this is plain wrong, mechanical systems are less complex then electronic systems which are vulnerable to shock (angry users), particulate matter (dust, sand, dead skin cells) water, strong magnetic fields, overcharge or undercharge, extreme heat or extreme cold. More things can go wrong with the processor then the slide mechanism and if the slide mechanism breaks it is far easier to fix. An electronic system is more prone to fail in a harsh environment then a mechanical one, that is why they must be sealed.

My HTC has survived a trip to a hardwood floor, enough to make the back come off and the battery fall out and the slide mechanism seems unaffected, not suppressing seeing as it consist of only two hinges.

It's alive now, but no-way is it staying that way.

MS has a way of hanging on, even just by the skin of its teeth. I think it is premature to call the death of WinMo when so many phones are made with it.

This is a point I get so tired of.

What if you're not looking for an experience, but instead, a functional system that can run whatever app you put on it (or develop for it), without question?

Yes, what if? Wow, if only I had written something like:

Now, you want something different. That's sort of the point of having different phones out there. If you want the iPhone experience, you buy an iPhone. If you want the Google experience, you buy an Android phone, and so on.

Oh wait, I did.

One that I don't understand why more iPhone users aren't flapping their gap more, about. I love the iPhone OS. It's pretty. But any proprietary/controlled/gimped device is basically worthless to me (and plenty of others, as Android has shown).

People aren't "flapping their gap"(?!) more because they like the iPhone and don't care about open source apps and find the App Store works rather well for them.

Your choice of Android is rather apt. Android accounts for less than 3% of smart phones, while iPhone accounts for 14%. There are certainly some people who don't like how Apple manages their phone, and prefer the openness of Android, but they are a small fraction compared to those who are quite happy with their iPhone. And further, there are almost certainly more Android users who would switch to the iPhone, but for that they are stuck on T-Mobile than there are that would switch to Android from iPhone, but that they are stuck on AT&T.

Another metric, the iPhone 3GS has a 99% customer satisfaction rate, so clearly people just don't really care.

Apple hasn't killed Google Voice

Apple filed a series of official answers to queries from the Federal Communications Commission, and provided the answers publicly on its Web site. In the responses, Apple stated that Google Voice was, contrary to media reports, not rejected from the App Store, but remains under review. In addition, it stated that the software has been delayed solely by Apple.

This is in stark contrast to reports from earlier this year that the Japanese hate the iPhone.

This "hatred" was debunked shortly thereafter:

AppleInsider has posted a great article explaining that Wired's story about Japanese iPhone hate was completely false and has been edited at least twice. The comments in the article were recycled and taken out of context, with those interviewed blogging about the mistakes. The piece then goes on to analyze the iPhone's standing in Japan, as well as some of the major factors working for and against it. At last it points out that the Wall Street Journal tried the same myth of failure just after the phone's launch in Japan, recycled from a myth the year before, pushed by a research company with a possible anti-Apple agenda.

The official App Catalog is stagnant, but there are new apps every day at the PreCentral.net forums

Care to provide any proof for the first part of that? Apple reported 65.000 apps on their store in July. That was up from 50,000 one month previous. That math would come out to 15,000 per month, but every indication has been that the Apple store is in fact accelerating. Sorry, not fanboi here, just citing links found in Wikipedia article on iPhone OS... and contesting a blatant fabrication.

So how many thousand apps are added to the Pre store each month? (Note the links I provided. Yours?)

It is one thing to hope for a reality, but another to just claim it in the face of actual proof.

it doesn't? On what do you base that? For example, http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/11/apple_dumping_intel_chipsets_for_nvidias_in_new_macbooks.html

According to nvidia, hybrid SLI can do exactly that.

Actually there was talk of him resigning from the board long before the Google Voice app was rejected.

Even more chatter prior to that due to conflict of interest on various topics dating back to Feb of this year

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/03/justice_department_investigating_hiring_practices_of_apple_others.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/05/04/ftc_investigating_antitrust_ties_between_apple_google.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/10/multi_touch_omitted_from_android_at_apples_request_report.html

Actually there was talk of him resigning from the board long before the Google Voice app was rejected.

Even more chatter prior to that due to conflict of interest on various topics dating back to Feb of this year

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/03/justice_department_investigating_hiring_practices_of_apple_others.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/05/04/ftc_investigating_antitrust_ties_between_apple_google.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/10/multi_touch_omitted_from_android_at_apples_request_report.html

Actually there was talk of him resigning from the board long before the Google Voice app was rejected.

Even more chatter prior to that due to conflict of interest on various topics dating back to Feb of this year

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/03/justice_department_investigating_hiring_practices_of_apple_others.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/05/04/ftc_investigating_antitrust_ties_between_apple_google.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/10/multi_touch_omitted_from_android_at_apples_request_report.html

Their global market share is so tiny (2007/8 *sales*. Not to be confused by the total number of phones in active use!), and their lack of Java so ridiculous, that we professional developers couldn't care less. They are not worth the effort, just to make some Apple fanboys happy, who won't do anything but complain anyway, because your app got more than one clickweel.

The linked article gets its Apple profit claims from here. Where it says that Apple and RIM take 58% of total cell phone profits while Nokia takes 55%. Suggesting that the figures can't be trusted.

It doesn't say anything of the sort. It says Apple/RIM 35% Nokia 55%. Which still leaves 10% for others. The 58% is a PREDICTION for the future, not a current figure.

Whether the current figures are right or not I can't be bothered to look up, but Gartner and Canalys both do quarterly market share studies as well as NPD, so it's perfectly possible to tripple check if you care.

The linked article gets its Apple profit claims from here. Where it says that Apple and RIM take 58% of total cell phone profits while Nokia takes 55%. Suggesting that the figures can't be trusted.

Back when 10.3 was coming out, Apple announced a feature entitled "Home on iPod", that would let you take your home settings, etc., with you on the iPod, so that you could recreate your home operating environment on any mac. It was in developer builds, and then was suddenly dropped. For those of you who don't remember it, here's a bit on it from Apple Insider.

There was a lot of speculation at the time that it disappeared because it was overheating iPods, but Apple said nothing about it. I can't help but wonder at this point if that's exactly what happened.

A 10% margin as implied in that second link is not necessarily a good thing for Apple's stock value

Based on those cost estimates per song, Hargreaves arrived at the 10 percent margin estimate. Applying that estimate to the $1.2 billion in revenue that iTunes is expected to generation in fiscal 2007, he believes the service will generate $0.09 to $0.14 in earnings-per-share for Apple.

I didn't see any attempt to account for the labor expenses in the operation, so it could be dangerously lower than this.

Operating expenses: -5c

Plus, none of these estimates include the Drm-free-music/TV shows/Movies/Apps/other junk available on ITMS.
Maybe it's possible Apple is making more money on ITMS than you think and adding more paying customers to the mix might not be such a bad idea.
Otherwise the AppleTV was a REALLY BAD idea.

I think that all of Apple's executives would be shot in the head by their shareholders for throwing away an estimated $120 million per year and $0.09-$0.14 per share profit for absolutely no reason other than spitefulness. And rightly so.

Granted, the costs are speculative, but even by Apple's own admissions they're not operating at a loss; they're turning a profit. A profit, in this sense, that means that everybody is paid, all royalties paid, all hardware and bandwidth paid for. In a business that other than a few support people and a few techs, essentially runs itself. You don't throw that away.

So you're saying Apple operates ITMS at a (near)loss to support their pod/phone business?
I call shenanigans.

Actually, Apple has been selling iPhones liberally in Singapore and Taiwan (?) with none of the restrictions it put on sales in the US and Europe precisely to create a black market supply for China.

The people getting the iPhone in China are not rice paddy peasants, they are the urban rich, and there are shitloads of them. The mobile market in China is already absurdly big. In a report on notes from Analyst Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros, AppleInsider wrote:

"[China Unicom,] the smaller of the two Chinese carriers has 'just' 133 million carriers compared to [state-run] China Mobile's 488 million but is in the middle of deploying a 3G cellular network that uses UMTS [rather than China-proprietary TD-SCDMA]."

AT&T & Verizon+Alltel in the US have around 78M and 80M subscribers respectively. That's why everyone is talking about China.

China Unicom leading the pack for iPhone deal
Ogg Theora, H.264 and the HTML 5 Browser Squabble

Silverlight can only be "thought of as a sort of HTML 5" if you also sort of thought of Win32 as HTML 4.

Jesus Christ, it's just a clone of Flash that attempts to make Vista's .Net as a binary substitute for the open web.

And yes, Microsoft is desperately trying to compete with Chrome/Chrome OS/HTML 5, just like the company successfully killed Client-side Java and non-IE browsers as a threat to the Win32 monopoly, then sat back and let IE go rotten once it ruled the roost.

If you still live in the late 90s and think Microsoft is invincible and can decree standards by fiat with its monopoly share of the PC desktop and the web browser, let me welcome you to the 2000s, where:

- Microsoft's WMA/WMV-VC-1 codecs failed to kill or even matter in the face of MPEG H.264/ACC.
- Microsoft's HD-DVD + HDi failed against Blu-Ray and H.264 content in iTunes.
- Microsoft's ASF/AAF container files failed to win against QuickTime/MPEG-4 (with even MS now using MP4 in Smooth Streaming).
- Efforts to push Zune and PlaysForSure DRM and MS-DRM music subscriptions failed against the iPod and iTunes.
- Efforts to push Windows Mobile as a brand have collapsed in the face of the iPhone.
- Microsoft's IE monopoly over the web has shrunk down to 60% and continues a rapid decline as Firefox, Chrome and Safari eat up share.
- Microsoft's Windows monopoly is facing a global shrinking PC market, mass rejection of a heavyweight Vista/Win7 type operating system as systems move toward netbooks and ultra cheap PCs and laptops that can't support a fat OS, and the loss of the premium PC market for higher end systems to Apple.

Microsoft might be all you know, but it's time to start learning about alternatives or you'll be stuck with the dinosaurs.

Apple launches HTTP Live Streaming standard in iPhone 3.0
Ogg Theora, H.264 and the HTML 5 Browser Squabble
Why Windows 7 is Microsoft's next Zune
Why Windows 7 on Netbooks Won't Save Microsoft

recent studies demonstrate that only iphone users are young, hip, cool, earn more than 70k a year and in general are more educated and productive, who cares about a processor for smartphones that won't be ready for the iphone?